Hello, Masters of the Book. I am Kim Young-mo, the director of ASTRA: Knights of Veda. On August 22nd, we released our new raid content, "Ancient Golden City." We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to all of Masters of the Book for your continued interest and feedback. We at the Development Team are constantly monitoring all your feedback and suggestions and based on the feedback you've provided regarding this update, we would like to share our responses and outline our future plans. 1. Since compatible characters are required to clear the Ancient Golden City, the accessibility and difficulty seem to be too high. We are considering various measures to improve the Ancient Golden City's difficulty and accessibility and make it more enjoyable. Among these measures is enabling the Support Knight system in Ancient Golden City, where you can receive help from other Masters of the Book’s Knights a fixed number of times. We will also be looking into improving the performance of both 5★ and 4★ Knights so that an even more varied amount of Knights can be utilized properly. 2. It is unfortunate that the Ancient Golden City content was released as solo content rather than as Co-Op party content. When will Co-Op raids with other users be released? When looking at data from the “Shattered Dimensional Rift” event, we were able to see that the frequency of players doing the event solo was much higher than those doing it with their friends. This is despite the event being made relatively difficult for solo players and with Co-Op play in mind. Because of this, we thought that if raid content was introduced to the game as a Co-Op mode, it would be much more difficult for the majority of Masters of the Book to enjoy the content and experience the difficulty as it was intended. We would like to ask for your understanding that due to the reasons mentioned above we released the content as a solo experience where you can obtain rewards individually. In addition, we are also planning to introduce a version of the Shattered Dimensional Rift that you can play from the Adventure Zones in the near future, allowing you to enjoy it with Co-Op in mode. With this version of Shattered Dimensional Rift, you will be able to party up not just with your fellow Guild members but also with other Masters of the Book and obtain rewards, and these rewards being items needed the most. We will be sharing more details on this content once details are finalized. 3. It would be nice if there was a function to hide the appearance of the Weapon of Genesis. It is currently possible to disable the appearance of the Weapon of Genesis on your weapon by selecting the Weapon of Genesis you wish to disable then at the bottom left of the Book screen, and select the desired visibility. However, even though the option is set to “Hide”, the appearance was still exposed when entering battles. This issue has been resolved during the 8/29 Maintenance, so please check the options and see if the proper setting has been applied. 4. The Weapon of Genesis was also released with a paying product, so the BM elements are continuously increasing, making it burdensome. I wish it could be obtained in-game. We apologize for releasing the Weapon of Genesis as a paid product. We plan to provide additional in-game events to obtain enough by playing the game. 5. It’s difficult for new users to find friends, and keeping up with the increasing content is challenging. It would be helpful if there were no level restrictions on Knight Support. We fully understand your concerns. To help new Masters of the Book settle into Todburg, we plan to remove the level restriction for utilizing support characters in the next update and explore ways to expand the support system across more content, starting with those that have no particular issues. 6. It would be great to improve the Arena matching system based on character stats instead of account level. The development team has heard your feedback regarding this issue and have done an in-depth review. During the review however, we have determined that it would be difficult to base the matchmaking criteria on abilities or stats. In addition, even if improvements are made in this way, there is a risk that we may provide an even worse experience than the current one. Therefore, we will carefully review the direction of improvement internally before proceeding. For the last, since the opening of the current Arena season, there have been no significant changes to the abilities or stats of the Knights. Regardless, the power of the Knights of Veda played by the Masters of the Book has become very strong, so we will take this into consideration and make improvements to ensure you can enjoy the Arena in a more engaging way. 7. The lack of materials when enhancing newly acquired accessories creates a significant burden. It would be great if accessories could also have a "Resetting Item" like Veda Knights or weapons. It is indeed true that enhancing and resetting accessories with every update takes a lot of time. As per your suggestion, we will add an item that allows resetting the growth of accessories. Additionally, we are preparing a preset save function to improve convenience. Although the scope of this feature is larger than expected, it is scheduled to be updated on October 2. We will ensure there are no delays in the schedule and also improve the convenience of equipment replacement. 8. It seems that the rewards for the "Wealth of the Holy Grail" have become too lackluster. It would be great to enhance the rewards and add a chance to obtain special rewards to increase the excitement of logging in. The rewards for the "Wealth of the Holy Grail" have not been updated since its release. We will quickly review the rewards and reset them with items that better fit the current situation for an upcoming update. 9. The rewards for the "Simon's Amazing Gift" event are too low, and it's disappointing that only one mascot can be obtained per Guild. The "Simon's Amazing Gift" event is new content designed to encourage guild members to gather in the Guild Territory and earn rewards. However, as mentioned, there were also opinions within the development team that the number of mascots obtainable as rewards is too low and that the incentives are too low to justify participating at a specific time. Therefore, with the update on Thursday, August 29th, we have increased the number of Mascot rewards to 5 and extended the event period by one day to four times a week. We hope for your active participation. 10. It seems that Death Crown has become essential in all content, but there is currently no place to obtain it. We plan to improve this by allowing you to obtain it as a reward upon completing the boss battle that utilizes Death Crown, the final battle of Season 1, in line with the Season 2 update. We are also preparing to provide it to those who have already completed the final battle of Season 1, so we kindly ask for your patience. Thank you. 11. In the 2024 roadmap, it was mentioned that a new relic set would be added with the Ancient Golden City update, but it hasn't been added. I am wondering if the Relic Engraving system has replaced this. Yes, the new Relic set has been replaced by the Relic Engraving system. We apologize for not providing a clearer notification in advance. As mentioned in the roadmap, we were planning a new Relic set, but creating a new set of Relics takes a long time. We also considered that many players have already invested significant time in setting up their current Relics. Additionally, we ask for your understanding that we decided it would be best not to diminish the value of the existing Relics at this time. However, new Relics will be available through the new Nightmare Dungeon to be added in Season 2. The grade of the new Relics will be the same as the current ones, but we are preparing to provide certain Knights with more favorable options. For those who have nearly completed their Relic setup, we are designing the content to allow farming based on how you want your Knights to be built. 12. Call of the Stars - Fallen Veda Wings: We are curious if Event-limited Knights and Weapons will be added. The development team is still discussing ways to allow new Masters of the Book to obtain event characters. We are carefully preparing to implement improvements related to this in Season 2. This concludes the summary of the topics we believe you might be interested in regarding the recent update. Lastly, we'd like to inform our Masters of the Book about the update schedule leading up to Season 2. On September 12 update, various quality-of-life improvements that were previously mentioned in the Director's letter will be implemented. 1. The Portrait of Thierry will have its floors expanded from 27 to 36. You will be able to receive rewards by clearing only the last section you completed. * You will also be able to receive the rewards from the previous floors and choose grace as well. 2. Sweep Function: This feature will be added to Calydon Hideout, Forgotten Mines, and Knight’s Mission. 3. Instant Stage Entry: When retrying Adventure Zones, Sealed Prisons, and Veda’s Nightmare, you will now enter the stage directly without going through a loading screen. 4. Arena Auto-Matching: An auto-matching function will be added to Arena content. 5. Equipment Dismantling: When dismantling equipment, you will now receive Enhancement Materials instead of Gold. Additionally, equipment obtained will automatically be dismantled based on its grade. 6. Bulk Reward Collection: The ability to collect rewards in bulk, previously only available in certain content like achievements, will be significantly expanded to other content. Additionally, a Hell Mode Boss Battle, named ‘Beast Battlefront’, will be introduced in the October 2nd update. We hope you look forward to it. Lastly, we regret to inform you that the schedule for Season 2 has been pushed back from the originally planned October 3rd to October 31st. While adding new content is important, we have prioritized the quality-of-life improvements mentioned above. As a result of the extended timeline, we will enhance the quality of Season 2 content, including new content that wasn’t on the update roadmap, such as a new challenge with 1,000 floors. We are also preparing various events and rewards to ensure your satisfaction, so please stay tuned. We sincerely apologize for the delay and the wait that Masters of the Book anticipating Season 2 will now have to endure. The development team is committed to not missing out on feedback from our Masters of the Book and will continue to strive to provide the best possible service. Thank you.
